#16501
Fats Navarro
1923 - 1950 (27 years)
Theodore "Fats" Navarro was an American jazz trumpet player. He was a pioneer of the bebop style of jazz improvisation in the 1940s. He had a strong stylistic influence on many other players, including Clifford Brown.
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Ralph Rainger
1901 - 1942 (41 years)
Ralph Rainger was an American composer of popular music principally for films. Biography Born Ralph Reichenthal in New York City, United States, Rainger initially embarked on a legal career, having obtained his law degree at Brown University in 1926. He had, however, studied piano from a young age and attended the Institute of Musical Art in New York. Public performances include radio broadcasts from New York and WOR as early as 1922. These were as soloist, accompanist to singers, and as duo-pianist with Adam Carroll or "Edgar Fairchild" .
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J. Farrell MacDonald
1875 - 1952 (77 years)
John Farrell MacDonald was an American character actor and director. He played supporting roles and occasional leads. He appeared in over 325 films over a four-decade career from 1911 to 1951, and directed forty-four silent films from 1912 to 1917.
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James Dunn
1901 - 1967 (66 years)
James Howard Dunn , billed as Jimmy Dunn in his early career, was an American stage, film, and television actor, and vaudeville performer. The son of a New York stockbroker, he initially worked in his father's firm but was more interested in theater. He landed jobs as an extra in short films produced by Paramount Pictures in its Long Island studio, and also performed with several stock theater companies, culminating with playing the male lead in the 1929 Broadway musical Sweet Adeline. This performance attracted the attention of film studio executives, and in 1931, Fox Film signed him to a Hol...
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Tiny Bradshaw
1907 - 1958 (51 years)
Myron Carlton "Tiny" Bradshaw was an American jazz and rhythm and blues bandleader, singer, composer, pianist, and drummer. His biggest hit was "Well Oh Well" in 1950, and the following year he recorded "The Train Kept A-Rollin'", important to the development of rock and roll; he co-wrote and sang on both records.
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Friedrich Bechtel
1855 - 1924 (69 years)
Friedrich Bechtel was a German philologist and linguist of Indo-European languages, known for his research of Greek dialects. He studied languages at the University of Göttingen, where his influences included philologists Theodor Benfey and August Fick. In 1878 he obtained his habilitation for comparative linguistics at Göttingen, becoming an associate professor in 1884. From 1881 onward, he was editor of the journal Göttingschen Gelehrten Anzeigen. In 1895 he was appointed professor of comparative linguistics at the University of Halle.
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James Morrison
1891 - 1947 (56 years)
James or Jim Morrison , known as "The Professor", was a notable South Sligo-style Irish fiddler. Life Morrison was born on 3 May 1893 near Riverstown, County Sligo at the townland of Drumfin. Morrison grew up in a community steeped in traditional Irish culture especially music and at the age of 17 he was employed by the Gaelic League to tutor the Connacht style of step dancing at the Gaelic League school in County Mayo.
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Franz Waxman
1906 - 1967 (61 years)
Franz Waxman was a German-born composer and conductor of Jewish descent, known primarily for his work in the film music genre. His film scores include Bride of Frankenstein, Rebecca, Sunset Boulevard, A Place in the Sun, Stalag 17, Rear Window, Peyton Place, The Nun's Story, and Taras Bulba. He received twelve Academy Award nominations, and won two Oscars in consecutive years . He also received a Golden Globe Award for the former film. Bernard Herrmann said that the score for Taras Bulba was "the score of a lifetime."
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Robert G. Ingersoll
1833 - 1899 (66 years)
Robert Green Ingersoll , nicknamed "the Great Agnostic", was an American lawyer, writer, and orator during the Golden Age of Free Thought, who campaigned in defense of agnosticism. Personal life Robert Ingersoll was born in Dresden, New York. His father, John Ingersoll, was an abolitionist-sympathizing Congregationalist preacher, whose radical opinions caused him and his family to relocate frequently. For a time, Rev. John Ingersoll substituted as preacher for American revivalist Charles G. Finney while Finney was on a tour of Europe. Upon Finney's return, Rev. Ingersoll remained for a few months as co-pastor/associate pastor with Finney.
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Marcel Tabuteau
1887 - 1966 (79 years)
Marcel Tabuteau was a French-American oboist who is considered the founder of the American school of oboe playing. Life Tabuteau was born in Compiègne, Oise, France, and given a post in the city's municipal wind band at age eleven. He then studied at the Conservatoire de Paris with the legendary oboist Georges Gillet.
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Clemens Krauss
1893 - 1954 (61 years)
Clemens Heinrich Krauss was an Austrian conductor and opera impresario, particularly associated with the music of Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss and Richard Wagner. He founded the New Year's Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic and conducted it until 1954.
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Max Schlossberg
1873 - 1936 (63 years)
Max Schlossberg was a Jewish-Baltic trumpeter, conductor, composer, and teacher. His legacy is a large number of successful trumpet students and the method book, Daily Drills and Technical Studies. Life Max Schlossberg was born in Libau, Courland, Russian Empire, now Liepāja, Latvia in 1873 to Nathan Schlossberg and an unknown mother. He went to the Moscow Conservatory at the age of nine. He emigrated first to the United States in 1894 as his father had done previously, but returned to Riga shortly thereafter for compulsory military service which he never completed. There, Schlossberg married...
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Charlie Christian
1916 - 1942 (26 years)
Charles Henry Christian was an American swing and jazz guitarist. He was among the first electric guitarists and was a key figure in the development of bebop and cool jazz. He gained national exposure as a member of the Benny Goodman Sextet and Orchestra from August 1939 to June 1941. His single-string technique, combined with amplification, helped bring the guitar out of the rhythm section and into the forefront as a solo instrument. For this, he is often credited with leading to the development of the lead guitar role in musical ensembles and bands.
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Lonnie Johnson
1899 - 1970 (71 years)
Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson was an American blues and jazz singer, guitarist, violinist and songwriter. He was a pioneer of jazz guitar and jazz violin and is recognized as the first to play an electrically amplified violin.
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Ray Noble
1903 - 1978 (75 years)
Raymond Stanley Noble was an English jazz and big band musician, who was a bandleader, composer and arranger, as well as a radio host, television and film comedian and actor; he also performed in the United States.
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Kannadasan
1927 - 1981 (54 years)
Kannadasan was an Indian philosopher, poet, film song lyricist, producer, actor, script-writer, editor, philanthropist, and is heralded as one of the greatest and most important lyricists in India. Frequently called Kaviarasu, With over 5000 lyrics, 6000 poems and 232 books, Kannadasan is widely known by the sobriquet Kaviarasu and he is also considered to be the greatest modern Tamil poet after Subramania Bharati. including novels, epics, plays, essays, his most popular being the 10-part religious book on Hinduism, Arthamulla Indhu Matham . He won the Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel Che...
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Victor Moore
1876 - 1962 (86 years)
Victor Fred Moore was an American actor of stage and screen, a major Broadway star from the late 1920s through the 1930s. He was also a writer and director, but is best remembered today as a comedian, playing timid, mild-mannered roles. Today's audiences know him as the star of a Christmas-themed movie that has become a perennial: It Happened on 5th Avenue . Moore plays a vagrant who occupies a millionaire's mansion—without the millionaire's knowledge—while the owner is vacationing.
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Pierre Statorius
1530 - 1591 (61 years)
Pierre Statorius, was a French grammarian and theologian, who settled among the Polish Brethren, becoming rector of a Calvinist Academy in Pińczów at the invitation of Francesco Lismanino. The place of birth and real name of Statorius are difficult to establish. According to the letter of Théodore de Bèze of 12 July 1567, Statorius was a student of his. In the accounts of the Baillif of Lausanne Hans Frisching for 1550 appears "Pierre de Tonneville", who signed his Latin letters "P. Tonvillanus S." and claimed to have come from the "pays Séquanes" which indicates Tonneville, Seine-Maritime, ...
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Livio Castiglioni
1911 - 1979 (68 years)
Livio Castiglioni was an Italian architect and designer. He made a significant contribution to twentieth-century Italian lighting design and was an early proponent of the practice of industrial design in Italy.
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Ron "Pigpen" McKernan
1945 - 1973 (28 years)
Ronald Charles McKernan , known as Pigpen, was an American musician. He was a founding member of the San Francisco band the Grateful Dead and played in the group from 1965 to 1972. McKernan grew up heavily influenced by African-American music, particularly the blues, and enjoyed listening to his father's collection of records and taught himself how to play harmonica and piano. He began socializing around the San Francisco Bay Area, becoming friends with Jerry Garcia. After the pair had played in various folk and jug bands, McKernan suggested they form an electric group, which became the Grateful Dead.
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Joe "Mr Piano" Henderson
1920 - 1980 (60 years)
Joe "Mr Piano" Henderson was a British pianist born in Glasgow, Scotland, who was most active during the 1950s. Early life and career Henderson was taught to play the piano by his mother and became a professional at age 15, playing in dance bands. After World War II, he began working for the Peter Maurice publishing company. It was there that he met the singer Petula Clark in 1947. In 1949, Henderson introduced Clark to Alan A. Freeman, who, together with her father Leslie, formed the Polygon record label, for which she recorded her earliest hits.
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Charles W. Clark
1865 - 1925 (60 years)
Charles William Clark was an American baritone singer and vocalist teacher. He is generally regarded as the first American baritone singer to be famous in Europe, and as one of the greatest baritone singers of all time. He sang to great acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and America, appearing in a wide variety of roles from the Italian, French and German repertoires that ranged from the lyric to the dramatic.
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James Beck
1929 - 1973 (44 years)
Stanley James Carroll Beck was an English television actor. He appeared in a number of programmes, but is mainly known for the role of Private Walker, a cockney spiv, in the BBC sitcom Dad's Army from the show's beginning in 1968 until his sudden death in 1973.
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Berry Oakley
1948 - 1972 (24 years)
Raymond Berry Oakley III was an American bassist and one of the founding members of the Allman Brothers Band. Known for his long, melodic bass runs, he was ranked number 46 on Bass Player magazine's list of "The 100 Greatest Bass Players of All Time". He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Allman Brothers Band in 1995.
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Nathaniel Peffer
1890 - 1964 (74 years)
Nathaniel Peffer was an American researcher on East Asian issues. Educated at the University of Chicago, Peffer became an East Asian correspondent for the New York Tribune, and lived in China for 25 years. After invitations to lecture on East Asia at various American universities, he was appointed a lecturer at Columbia University in 1937, associate professor of International Relations there in 1939, and Professor in 1943. He retired from the university in 1958.
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Fritz Busch
1890 - 1951 (61 years)
Fritz Busch was a German conductor. Busch was born in Siegen to a musical family, and studied at the Cologne Conservatory. After army service in the First World War, he was appointed to senior posts in two German opera houses. At the Stuttgart Opera he modernised the repertory, and at the Dresden State Opera he presented world premieres of operas by Richard Strauss, Ferruccio Busoni, Paul Hindemith and Kurt Weill among others. He also conducted at the Bayreuth and Salzburg Festivals.
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Martti Räsänen
1893 - 1976 (83 years)
Arvo Martti Oktavianus Räsänen was a Finnish linguist and turkologist. He operated as a docent of turkology at University of Helsinki from 1926 forwards, and as an additional professor of Turkic philology from 1944 to 1961.
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Marjorie Rambeau
1889 - 1970 (81 years)
Marjorie Burnet Rambeau was an American film and stage actress. She began her stage career at age 12, and appeared in several silent films before debuting in her first sound film, Her Man . She was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her roles in Primrose Path and Torch Song , and received the 1955 National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress for her roles in A Man Called Peter and The View from Pompey's Head.
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Blind Lemon Jefferson
1893 - 1929 (36 years)
Lemon Henry "Blind Lemon" Jefferson was an American blues and gospel singer-songwriter and musician. He was one of the most popular blues singers of the 1920s and has been called the "Father of the Texas Blues".
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Pinto Colvig
1892 - 1967 (75 years)
Vance DeBar Colvig Sr. , known professionally as Pinto Colvig, was an American voice actor, cartoonist, and circus and vaudeville performer whose schtick was playing the clarinet off-key while mugging. Colvig was the original performer of the Disney characters Goofy and Pluto, as well as Bozo the Clown. In 1993, he was posthumously made a Disney Legend for his contributions to Walt Disney Films, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Fun and Fancy Free.
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Carl Salemann
1849 - 1916 (67 years)
Carl Hermann Salemann was a Russian Iranist scholar. He was an academician of Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences and a director of Asiatic Museum of the Academy of Sciences . Biography Salemann was a Baltic German, born in Revel .
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Alexander Tcherepnin
1899 - 1977 (78 years)
Alexander Nikolayevich Tcherepnin was a Russian-born composer and pianist. His father, Nikolai Tcherepnin , and his sons, Serge Tcherepnin and Ivan Tcherepnin, as well as two of his grandsons , Sergei and Stefan, were composers. His son Serge was involved in the earliest development of electronic music and instruments. His mother was a member of the artistic Benois family, a niece of Alexandre Benois.
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Michael Davitt
1846 - 1906 (60 years)
Michael Davitt was an Irish republican activist for a variety of causes, especially Home Rule and land reform. Following an eviction when he was four years old, Davitt's family migrated to England. He began his career as an organiser of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which resisted British rule in Ireland with violence. Convicted of treason felony for arms trafficking in 1870, he served seven years in prison. Upon his release, Davitt pioneered the New Departure strategy of cooperation between the physical-force and constitutional wings of Irish nationalism on the issue of land reform. With...
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Adele Sandrock
1863 - 1937 (74 years)
Adele Sandrock was a German-Dutch actress. After a successful theatrical career, she became one of the first German movie stars. Early life Sandrock was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, the daughter of the German merchant Eduard Sandrock and his Dutch wife, Johanna Simonetta ten Hagen . With sister Wilhelmine and brother Christian , she grew up in Rotterdam, and, after her parents' divorce on 15 November 1869, in Berlin.
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Silvio Antoniano
1540 - 1603 (63 years)
Silvio Antoniani was a musician, canon lawyer, writer on education, priest and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, who spent most of his career in the Roman Curia. Life The son of a poor wool merchant, his talent with the lyre at a young age drew the attention of many patrons and led indirectly to his career in the Church.
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Ray Collins
1889 - 1965 (76 years)
Ray Bidwell Collins was an American character actor in stock and Broadway theatre, radio, films, and television. With 900 stage roles to his credit, he became one of the most successful actors in the developing field of radio drama. A friend and associate of Orson Welles for many years, Collins went to Hollywood with the Mercury Theatre company and made his feature-film debut in Citizen Kane , as Kane's ruthless political rival. Collins appeared in more than 75 films and had one of his best-remembered roles on television, as Los Angeles homicide detective Lieutenant Arthur Tragg in the CBS-TV...
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Hoke Norris
1913 - 1977 (64 years)
Hoke Marion Norris was a Chicago journalist whose reporting during the Civil Rights Movement had a significant impact on popular opinion in Chicago. Born in 1913 in Holly Springs, North Carolina, Norris studied journalism at Wake Forest College. He married Edna Dees Norris of North Carolina and had one child, a daughter, Marion Dees Norris. His first journalism job was writing for the Daily Advance in Elizabeth City, NC, which he left to write for the Raleigh News and Observer. He then worked for the Associated Press before joining the Army Air Force in 1942. When his tour of duty ended, he r...
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Ralph Lynn
1882 - 1962 (80 years)
Ralph Clifford Lynn was an English actor who had a 60-year career, and is best remembered for playing comedy parts in the Aldwych farces first on stage and then in film. Lynn became an actor at the age of 18 and very soon began to be cast in knut or "silly ass" roles. He played such parts as a supporting actor for more than two decades until 1922, when he was cast in the lead of a new West End farce, Tons of Money, in which he achieved immediate stardom. After the success of this play, its co-producer, the actor-manager Tom Walls, leased the Aldwych Theatre in London, where for the next ten y...
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Sigfrid Karg-Elert
1877 - 1933 (56 years)
Sigfrid Karg-Elert was a German composer in the early twentieth century, best known for his compositions for pipe organ and reed organ. Biography Karg-Elert was born Siegfried Theodor Karg in Oberndorf am Neckar, Germany, the youngest of the twelve children of Johann Jacob Karg, a book dealer, and his wife Marie Auguste Karg, born Ehlert . According to another account, however, his father was a newspaper editor and publisher . The family finally settled in Leipzig in 1882, where Siegfried received his first musical training and private piano instruction. At a gathering of composers in Leipzig...
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Wesley Ruggles
1889 - 1972 (83 years)
Wesley Ruggles was an American film director. Life and work He was born in Los Angeles, California, younger brother of actor Charlie Ruggles. He began his career in 1915 as an actor, appearing in a dozen or so silent films, on occasion with Charlie Chaplin.
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Hank Mobley
1930 - 1986 (56 years)
Henry "Hank" Mobley was an American tenor saxophonist and composer. Mobley was described by Leonard Feather as the "middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone", a metaphor used to describe his tone, that was neither as aggressive as John Coltrane nor as mellow as Lester Young, and his style that was laid-back, subtle and melodic, especially in contrast with players like Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. The critic Stacia Proefrock claimed him "one of the most underrated musicians of the bop era." Mobley's compositions included "Double Exposure," "Soul Station", and "Dig Dis," among others.
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Robert Heger
1886 - 1978 (92 years)
Robert Heger was a German conductor and composer from Strasbourg, Alsace-Lorraine. Life and career He studied at the Conservatory of Strasbourg under Franz Stockhausen, then in Zurich under Lothar Kempter and finally in Munich under Max von Schillings. After early conducting engagements in Strasbourg he made his debut at Ulm in 1908 or 1909. He held appointments in Barmen , at the Vienna Volksoper , and at Nuremberg , where he also conducted Philharmonic concerts. He went on to Munich and Vienna, where he recorded a magnificent version of Goldmark's Rustic Wedding Symphony with the Vienna Ph...
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Thomas Ball
1819 - 1911 (92 years)
Thomas Ball was an American sculptor and musician. His work has had a marked influence on monumental art in the United States, especially in New England. Life He was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, to Thomas Ball, a house and sign painter and Elizabeth Wyer Hall. His father died when he was twelve. After several odd jobs to help support his family he spent three years working at the New England Museum, the precursor to the Boston Museum. There he entertained the visitors by drawing portraits, playing the violin, and singing, and repaired mechanical toys. He then became an apprentice for the museum wood-carver Abel Brown.
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John Clarke Whitfield
1770 - 1836 (66 years)
John Clarke-Whitfeld was an English organist and composer. Life He was born John Clarke at Gloucester, and educated at Oxford under Dr Philip Hayes. In 1789 he was appointed organist of the parish church at Ludlow. Four years later he took the degree of Mus. Bac. at Cambridge, and in 1795 he was chosen as organist of Armagh cathedral, whence he removed in the same year to Dublin, with the appointments of organist and master of the children at St Patrick's Cathedral and Christchurch.
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Randall Thompson
1899 - 1984 (85 years)
Randall Thompson was an American composer, particularly noted for his choral works. Career Thompson attended The Lawrenceville School, where his father was an English teacher. He then attended Harvard University, became assistant professor of music and choir director at Wellesley College, and received a doctorate in music from the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music. He went on to teach at the Curtis Institute of Music , at the University of Virginia, and at Harvard University. He is particularly noted for his choral works. He was an honorary member of the Rho Tau chapter of Phi...
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Helene Weyl
1893 - 1948 (55 years)
Friederike Bertha Helene Weyl was a German writer and translator. She was married to the mathematician Hermann Weyl. Life Weyl was born on 30 March 1893 in Ribnitz, Germany. She was the daughter of the Jewish country doctor Bruno Joseph and his wife Bertha. Her father was born in Pomerania, and her mother came from a well-established Mecklenburg family. Weyl and her younger sister were raised atheists.
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Joseph Jefferson
1829 - 1905 (76 years)
Joseph Jefferson III , often known as Joe Jefferson, was an American actor. He was the third actor of this name in a family of actors and managers, and one of the most famous 19th century American comedians. Beginning as a young child, he continued as a performer for most of his 76 years. Jefferson was particularly well known for his adaptation and portrayal of Rip Van Winkle on the stage, reprising the role in several silent film adaptations. After 1865, he created no other major role and toured with this play for decades.
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Timoteus Pokora
1928 - 1985 (57 years)
Timoteus Pokora was a Czech sinologist known for his translations and studies of Chinese literature and law, particularly dealing with the Han dynasty. Life and career Timoteus Pokora was born on 26 June 1928 in Brno, which was then part of the First Czechoslovak Republic. He did undergraduate studies at the University of Brno, where he studied law. He then pursued graduate studies in Sinology at Charles University in Prague, where wrote a thesis on Han dynasty philosopher Wang Chong and received a master's degree in 1955. He then spent two years in China at Peking University studying and ...
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Lew Brown
1893 - 1958 (65 years)
Lew Brown was a lyricist for popular songs in the United States. During World War I and the Roaring Twenties, he wrote lyrics for several of the top Tin Pan Alley composers, especially Albert Von Tilzer. Brown was one third of a successful songwriting and music publishing team with Buddy DeSylva and Ray Henderson from 1925 until 1931. Brown also wrote or co-wrote many Broadway shows and Hollywood films. Among his most-popular songs are "Button Up Your Overcoat", "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree", "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries", "That Old Feeling", and "The Birth of the Blues".
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Celio Secondo Curione
1503 - 1569 (66 years)
Celio Secondo Curione was an Italian humanist, grammarian, editor and historian, who exercised a considerable influence upon the Italian Reformation. A teacher in Humanities, university professor and preceptor to the nobility, he had a lively and colourful career, moving frequently between states to avoid denunciation and imprisonment: he was successively at Turin, Milan, Pavia, Venice and Lucca, before becoming a religious exile in Switzerland, first at Lausanne and finally at Basel, where he settled. He was famous and admired as a publisher and editor of works of theology and history, also...
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